Chicagoist's "Beer of the Week": Anchor Old Foghorn Ale

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Oct 5, 2006 6:40PM

First, we'd like to request a moment of silence for the two million pounds of hops that met a fate worse than death in a warehouse fire in Yakima, Washington, Tuesday. Oh, the sweet beer you could have become.

Now, on to the present. The Anchor Brewing Company is as synonymous with San Francisco as the Golden Gate Bridge, Joe Cool, Rice-A-Roni, and BALCO. We live for their Christmas ale, a secret recipe that never tastes the same. However, our regular Anchor selection would have to be Old Foghorn Ale.

Old Foghorn is a barley wine; or "barley wine-style ale", for purposes of American redundancy. Barley wines are called such because of their high alcohol content (in excess of twelve percent, in some selections), but they're, in fact, beers, because they're made from grain. Typical characteristics of barley wines are a natural sweetness, lots of malt on the palate, and a distinctive bitterness. They're also brewed from high specific gravities. In plainspeak, this means you're geting a heavy beer. It's prefect as an after-dinner drink, to ward off the chill of a rainy night, or get the blood flowing during the cold months. Barley wines are the strongest member of the bitter beer family.

Old Foghorn pours a deep ruby in color, with a thin head. The carbonation on this beer is persistent and ticklish, like champagne bubbles. That's because Old Foghorn is brewed using a natural carbonation process called "bunging". Of course, all that giggling we're doing while drinking this could be from persistent use of the word "bung". In addition to barley malt, Old Foghorn is brewed using Cascade hops, and fermented with a true top-fermenting (for high temperature brewing) ale yeast. While the ale is aging in Anchor's cellars, it's "dry-hopped" using additional Cascade hops. Old Foghorn has a lot of residual sugars. Its original gravity is so high that the yeast can't ferment all the sugars. Old Foghorn has a pleasant citrus nose, with some esters and yeast. In addition to the barley malt, You'll also pick up hints of raisins and vanilla on the palate.

We were first introduced to Old Foghorn over a decade ago at the Hopleaf, back when a quarter in the jukebox could get you a spin of some Al Green and the Sir Douglas Quintet, and they didn't serve food. These days, we could see this beer as an appropriate digestif for the Hopleaf's steak frites. It's also another successful example of combining Old World brewing recipes with American craft beer technology to create something transcendent. It's also Chicagoist's "beer of the week".